Keith Hudson's Musings

Cleaning up our own stables next

David Cameron did a deal with the other 27 Prime/Foreign EU Ministers in the early hours of this morning. On Monday there will be a short Act of Parliament announcing a Referendum on 23 June on whether the country leaves the EU or remains. Six Cabinet Ministers have already let it be known that they oppose Cameron’s deal and that we should leave the EU.

The heavyweight intellectual among the six is Michael Gove, now Minister for Justice and ex-Minister for Education. He has come out with a 1,570-word statement on why he opposes the EU. It is well argued and superbly well-written as one might expect. The crucial sentence is the following:

“… our membership of the European Union prevents us being able to change huge swathes of law and stops us being able to choose who makes critical decisions which affect all our lives.”

This is true enough but there is an important proviso in this country. A great deal of the tenor and direction of government policy in Britain is set almost as much by our own unelected civil service as the bureaucracy in Brussels sets it for the EU. If we vote to leave the EU in June then we ought to follow through with reforming our own governmental system next.